If you want to automatically include the deptools plugin
in your build, so it can fail your build if it finds an error,
you can do it like this:

<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>deptools.plugin</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-deptools-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.3</version>
<!--
Use these optional settings to include and/or include
dependencies from the check:
<configuration>
<includePattern> a valid regular expression </includePattern>
<excludePattern> a valid regular expression </excludePattern>
</configuration>
The pattern is matched against the string "groupId:artifactId" for
all dependencies in the dependency-path.
Example:
<includePattern>com.kjetland:.*</includePattern>
The pattern above will only fail the build if an error is found
on any dependency linked to from a an artifact with groupId
equal to 'com.kjetland'
-->
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>compile</phase>
<goals>
<goal>version-checker</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>mbk_mvn_repo</id>
<name>mbk_mvn_repo</name>
<url>https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbknor/mbknor.github.com/master/m2repo/releases</url>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

The plugin can also be used as a maven-enforcer-plugin rule.

For example-maven-projects showing the problem and the plugin as enforcer-rule, have a look here: